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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Tower of Bable

Most relationships are quick and easy and in the same language. So far mine has been the same route, but recently I have needed to step up my game. By this I mean I need to learn Dutch. How often do you think that sentence happens? Not saying anything about the Dutch, they are awesome.

In order to learn Dutch I turned to Rosetta Stone. I have used Rosetta Stone before to get me through Paris (and really I didn't use it as much as I thought. Contrary to what you hear the French waiters are fine with my broken French or English, as long as I am cute. Which I was. And I enjoyed every moment in France...Anyway) so I figured they would be good to go with them for Dutch. The thing was this time I need to get an understanding of the language and not just enough to buy shoes and wine, but to communicate with people and friends. It was about 3 years ago that used it first for French and I can tell you it is still an amazing way to go. I have purchased the online 3 month access to get started. Included with online access (Totale) is both an iPad and iPhone applications that you can use on the go. So while I use my laptop/iPad for core learning and interaction, I can use my iPhone application in my car on the way to/from work to help instill the lessons. This app takes place of the CD's that used to come with it, but this way the speech recognition tells you if you are saying the word or phrase wrong. While the iPhone app does not to take place of the actual online learning it really does help. Since this is an immersion program sometimes what you are being taught is not immediately understood. There has been more than one thing that all of a sudden clicked with me just by repeating the phrase over and over again. I couldn't be happier with this entire program and feel that this is definitely money well spent if you are looking to learn a new language.

On a side note Rosetta Stone actually offers Welsh. Yes Welsh as in Wales Welsh. Don't know why I find this so interesting, but I do!